“He doesn’t look like he’s coming willingly.”
Crat turned to Marcel, his tattoos seeming to join in the hateful glare. He opened the ‘car door. “Are you coming willingly?” he asked, eyes locked on Marcel.
Vik nodded, slumped in his seat. “Yes sir, of course, sir.”
Dutrix Crat slammed the door again. He stepped forward slowly and leaned over Marcel, abusing every extra centimetre of height he had over the man.
Marcel’s hand instinctually went to the pistol on his belt, but he fought the urge to draw it, even as Crat tried to swagger his bulk over him.
“And what is it you think you’re doing, Talwar?” Crat asked.
“I’m running some preliminary inve—”
“You are harassing Lazacorp employees and mucking around for gossip,” Crat interrupted. Marcel tried to respond, but was half-shocked. He had seen this man out and about many times. He hadn’t thought much of Verus’s quiet assistant, who the foreman liked to walk around like a muzzled guard dog. With Lazarus away, the hound was evidently off its leash.
“I’m doing my job,” Marcel recovered, taking only a small step back.
“Keep your job out of Blackwood Row,” the man said, taking a large step forward.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.”
Both turned as a young policeman walked up. He looked Crat up and down, and the man slid back towards his car, retreating under the gaze. The policeman turned to Marcel and nodded.
“Lambert sent me, said he had a case he wanted to talk to you about.” Then his eyes flickered back to Crat. “Is this man bothering you?”
Marcel shook his head. “Just having a friendly chat,” he said, allowing himself a little smugness in his tone.
Crat bowed his head, muttered some inaudible excuse, and ducked into his autocar. It actually impressed Marcel how quick the fight left the man. He watched as the ‘car groaned to life, and Crat puttered down the street, past the main gate. The retreating autocar kicked up dust in the noon sun, growing smaller and smaller as it disappeared down the road.
Marcel smiled at the cop. “So that case you mentioned?”
* * *
As was his general manner, Lambert had scheduled his meeting away from his office in City Hall. Marcel found himself pointed in the direction of The Piglet and The Scone, a pleasant café on the main thoroughfare of Huile, Viexus Avenue. The Piglet was decorated with a carefully manicured pre-Calamity charm, a pretense that it had survived a century of warfare all while retaining its cheerful quaintness, instead of opening its doors a mere half-year ago, just another one of the many new high-end bistros that rode in on the wave of Phenian investment.
Lambert had evidentially double-booked himself, as Marcel found the man sitting and smoking across the table from a blonde-haired woman Marcel recognized from Desct’s funeral. The Minister of Justice smiled and waved Marcel down, ordering a cup of coffee and a redberry muffin.
“Marcel, a colleague and old war buddy,” Lambert explained as Marcel sat. “Marcel, this is Sophia. I was just relating to her some of our war tales.”
“Yes, we already me…” Marcel started, before realizing that this was not the same blonde-haired woman from the funeral. He forgave himself for the mistake, Lambert clearly had a very specific type. “Nice to meet you.”
“You were in the Battle for Huile as well?” the woman asked.
“For and Under,” Marcel said.
“That must have been rather frightening.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say we were frightened, would you, Marcel?” Lambert gestured with his lunchtime cigar. “No, no, we had a rush of patriotism in our blood that day.”
“You could say that,” Marcel offered, hoping that would be the last of it, but Lambert continued:
“It was our duty to free the city, you see, after the Principate had pulled their silly little coup. We had ourselves a grand army: Huile patriots, men from General Durand’s northern army, and plenty of volunteers, from the Border States down to the heart of the Confederacy. It was exhilarating to be amongst so many patriots. So I’d say it was more of a fevered anticipation than fear.”
“You said you had a case?” Marcel asked.
Lambert smiled and spoke with his gaze, eyes flashing back and forth quickly. Marcel suppressed his sigh.
“Yes, it was a glorious day,” Marcel agreed.
“Our squad was known as the Huile Sewer Rats. A dreadful name, I know, but it fit our Resurgence spunk that served us so well. We were one among many, courageous freedom fighters against Principate tyranny!” Lambert narrated, as much with his hands as with his voice. “Our camp was on the outskirts of Huile Field, though when we first arrived the field, as it were, still held many of the buildings from the old outer city, blocks of decrepit ruins squatting outside Huile’s walls. The Principate had dug themselves in deep there, rows of trenches and autogun nests, mazes of mines and booby-traps. Imagine facing all that!”
Marcel didn’t have to imagine, and in truth, the air in the camp had not been one of dread or even apprehension. It was pure confidence. General Durand had brought in heavy artillery to Phenia, and the resulting bombardment had forced the Principate headquarters to retreat into the refineries of Blackwood Row.
UCCR shells played symphonies throughout the night, leveling any and all structures larger than a doghouse that had the misfortune to sit outside of Huile’s walls. The barrage had been a source of inspiration, soldiers had sung smug songs about “Poor General Agrippus and her boys in blue,” and some had even joked that the coming battle would be more like strolling over a graveyard.
The only complaint had come from their captain. Marcel had overheard Alba shouting in the command tent that they needed to just fire straight onto the refineries. It wasn’t like there were many civilians in there, she had yelled, it was just the æther-oil.
Alba had lost that debate. The next morning their squad was given only hardtack for rations, despite the abundance of taur and spikefowl meat most other squads had received.
“We waited for days,” Lambert continued, the woman nodding politely, “on edge, eager to get into the fray. When the last shell fell, we screamed, ‘For Freedom, let the Phoenix rise again!’ and charged.”
Actually, the only one who had spoken, as far as Marcel could recall, was Alba herself, who had shouted, “Move, you idiots!”
“Our job, you see,” Lambert said, “was to take the ruins of the æroship tower halfway to the wall.” Lambert flicked his cigar up, as if to indicate its height. “Good vantage point. I was the comm-man, had a great ætherwave voxbox strapped to my back, to call back everything we saw.”
Marcel ignored his coffee and Lambert’s narration to watch people pass by the open café. The majority were Huilians, dressed in a mix of colorful styles that had been already fading out of fashion when Marcel left Phenia. There were some outsiders as well, in rougher garb, all leather and patchwork. Autocars drove besides rusting wasteland buggies, and even a few horses trotted down the cobblestones. Most of the shops and cafés were open, and there were even a few permitless street vendors, hawking scavenged knickknacks, cooking strange-smelling dishes, and arguing with police.
But despite his best efforts, it was impossible to filter out all of Lambert’s words. He had heard Lambert’s telling of the battle so many times that he could almost believe the account’s accuracy. But when Lambert described a frenzied assault up to the æroship tower, Marcel couldn’t help but remember the stunning quiet of the battlefield that morning, the eerie absence of Principate soldiers. When Lambert described his wounding, Marcel could only recall wondering how the man had managed to get a bullet in his foot without any enemy troops in sight. When Lambert narrated their heroic assault up the æroship tower, Marcel could only relive that strange unease he felt climbing the abandoned spire.
“We could see the whole battle from the top,” Lambert said. “It was a glorious affair, our fine men and wome
n pushed the Principate brutes to the walls of Blackwood Row, which our artillery had blasted to rubble.”
Alba had reported back to command, through the voxbox, that the Confederacy lines advanced without resistance.
“It’s too easy” she had said. “The Principate bastards aren’t cowards, they could force us to bleed for every metre, yet they don’t.” Marcel got the sense she would have preferred a bloody fight, a painful push through the rubble. He had convinced himself that all was as it seemed, that this was victory, one where he hadn’t even needed to unload his rifle, for why shouldn’t a noble cause give birth to a noble end?
Then he noticed the dust clouds.
“They were crafty,” Lambert said, “I’ll give the Principate that.”
Marcel had grabbed his binoculars. From around the bend of the city a storm of dust appeared, and in it, dozens of motorcycles, autotrucks, warwalkers, and dathkreis rode. The back of the Resurgence line burst into clouds of debris and bodies. Marcel spied a tank, then two, then eight, some treaded, others crab-legged. Alba shouted their observations with a controlled mania through the voxbox, but the details didn’t seem to matter much. Within a few minutes the host of Principate war machines had crashed into the UCCR army.
“Yes, well, it was an unfortunate thing,” Lambert said. “They were throwing their own men away, really, but I will admit it foisted upon us a great cost. We hadn’t expected such barbarism. It was a hard-fought battle, but they barely managed to squeeze out a small victory.”
It was a slaughter. Marcel could only watch, as they hadn’t brought any scoped rifles or small pieces of mobile artillery that might have been of some use. The motorcycles and ‘trucks skimmed by the lines, peppering the unprotected backs of the Resurgence soldiers. A few days earlier the ground would have been uncrossable for all but infantry, but the continual pounding of the artillery had created massive open spaces that the Principate army used as highways.
“Still, it was a heroic struggle, it set up our eventual triumph. Good men spilled their blood, but not in vain, wouldn’t you say Marcel?”
Walkers clambered over the rougher areas, firing from above, and dathkreis flung themselves straight into the Resurgence ranks, giant metal balls with motorguns and blades, slicing through dozens of men before turning and firing upon the rest. Alba shouted through the pandemonium, yelling into the voxbox that they needed to pull back.
“I mean just look at the city now. Yes? Marcel, are you with us?”
The screams of artillery sung through the air, one shell skimming the tower itself. They landed where the Principate war machines had been minutes before, but rarely on the enemy’s current position. Marcel saw few tanks in flames, but he saw many Resurgence squads disappear under the fire of their own artillery. Alba didn’t wait for instructions, or possibly she ignored the ones she was given. “We’re getting out of here,” she said.
“Marcel!”
“Yes! What?” Marcel shook himself from the grip of memory, before swearing as some of his coffee spilled from his still-shaking hand onto his lap.
“Are you all right?” Lambert asked. The woman had an eyebrow raised. Marcel put down the coffee and wiped himself with one of the café’s embroidered napkin.
“Yes, I’m fine. It was… a fine battle. Yes,” he said. His pants were going to be stained, and Lambert’s rendition of their shared history had more than irked him. The man reveled in the heroism, as if it were all good fun. The war was heroic, Marcel had no doubt, but not in its victory. The heroism lay in the sacrifices it demanded. Lambert had only had to sacrifice a toe and a few days sick leave, not even a cost compared to what it spared him from. For Rada, Henri, Danel… their glory had not come so cheap.
“Good man,” Lambert said to the woman, “a bit of a daydreamer. I have some business I need to discuss with him, but if you wish to grab tea in, oh, say an hour?”
The woman took out a decorated bronze watch. “I can’t. My father’s caravan is heading out of town in… well I should be going now, actually.”
“Already? I didn’t know you were leaving today,” Lambert said, his face aghast.
“Yes, it was nice speaking with you two.” She got up and finished off her drink, before walking away.
“If you’re interested in history, why Marcel has his own…”
But she was already on her way, a prompt waiter strolling in to remove the remains of her meal.
“Ah damnations,” Lambert muttered. “Always the pretty ones. They get you on a rope and drag out what they can.” He tapped ashes off his cigar. “Perhaps that’s what makes it fun.”
“You certainly tell our story in a… fun way.”
Lambert chuckled meekly, “You know how it is, Marcel. Start with the funerals and the grieving widows, people go white in the face. We let the misery color everything, let anger muddle every mind, how can peace ever return? So we put on a bit of a show. A soldier’s duty never ends, I suppose.”
“I suppose,” Marcel repeated, shaking his head. Lambert wasn’t wrong, it was the pulps and the heroic stories in the papers that first got Marcel interested in joining up. If he had known the cost… well then he might have suffered less, but where would Huile be? Or the UCCR? If it took sacrifices to keep the Principate at bay, then sacrifices needed to be made. Perhaps it was easier for his friend to put on the proper face, since Lambert was in his hospital bed when the Huile Sewer Rats had been sent to earn their name…
“So, do you have a case?” Marcel said, knocking on the table as if to startle away the past.
“Oh, indeed,” Lambert said, reaching into his briefcase. “If you aren’t too busy.”
“Could always use a distraction,” Marcel said, thinking of the empty calendar book sitting on his desk.
“I hope this is more than that,” Lambert said, pulling out an envelope. It was of brownish paper, cut open, with a folded letter poking out. “A mailroom mix-up got us sent this.” He passed it to Marcel.
“From Gileon Fareau, to Lazarus Roache.” Marcel read off the front. “Since when does City Hall read private mail?”
Lambert laughed. “Not normal policy for the Office of Justice, no, but Mr. Roache gave me explicit permission to open his mail in unusual or emergency situations. Considering the name, I thought it reasonable to check it out. Know him?”
Marcel shook his head. “Should I?”
“I would have thought people in your business would scour the obituaries for jobs, no?”
“Must have missed him,” Marcel said. In truth he hadn’t read any of the Gazette in the two weeks since Desct’s death. He saw the first issue with a new name in the Editor-in-Chief section, and he let the other issues simply stack in the corner of his office. That made it less real.
“You needn’t be embarrassed.” Lambert shrugged. “He was some Lazacorp worker. Died three¬—no four days ago. Fell into machinery. Unpleasant. I sent a few men down, asked some questions, the story seemed straight, apparently an unfortunate accident.” He watched his smoke rise. “I don’t want to send in more men and simply cause a scene with Verus, you know how that man is, but…”
“But…”
Lambert pointed to the letter.
Dear Mr. Lazarus Roache,
Sincere apologies for bothering you, as I am aware you are quite a busy man, but I know not where else to turn. I am honored that you took me in to your fine business, few in Huile would give a poor scrap-merchant such as I, without wealth or friends, a chance, let alone a job transporting valuable machinery throughout your refineries. Your generosity and kindness has lifted me up, your example proved to me the beneficent glory of the United Confederacy of the Citizens’ Resurgence…
Marcel skimmed over a few more paragraphs of histrionic praise.
Still, I find myself in a quandary. There is a man I have worked with who I fear may not be acting in good faith with Lazacorp. I do not wish to besmirch the integrity of your hiring process, but I
worry that perhaps some facts about his past were withheld from you. As I do not desire to have this letter descend into simple gossip, I would much prefer to speak with you on this matter in person. Sooner rather than later, as I admit, I have some fear about the possible intentions of this man.
Forgive my impertinence, I hope that I am not insulting your beneficent generosity with excessive requests, but I have one more plea. Would it be possible to have my shift changed so I no longer have to work alongside this man? I have requested such a change to Mr. Verus, but since I was not willing at that time to explain my full reasons, it was denied.
Please, good sir, please fulfill these requests for me, and I will be eternally thankful.
Yours in gratitude,
Gileon Fareau
Chapter 7
Marcel glanced through an old newspaper as the trolley rumbled its way out of town. He read Gileon’s obituary, then reread it, and then stopped to think, and reread it again. It stated that: A) Fareau died in a “workplace accident” at Lazacorp. B) He left no living relatives. And C) … Well, there was no C.
Still, this did little to dishearten Marcel. If the case was easy enough to unpack by reading a simple obituary then it would never have been thrown to him. Assuming there was a case, but that was an assumption Marcel felt safe in making. Coincidences did happen, but not very often. Gall was an obvious suspect, sketchy enough to have warranted Lazarus’s attention: he fit perfectly into the story. Others were to be considered no doubt, some unmet guard, or bureaucrat, or cart-pusher, or even a mutant worker, though Marcel was hesitant to assume the latter, considering how many false accusations beset Mutants, based on the universal bias against the grotesquely featured.
The trolley stopped and a kortonian got on, the only non-human in a slowly dissipating mass of transit-goers. There were few people who took the trolley to the very edge of town. Most people who worked the agri-factory drove themselves or took the autobuses that made daily routes. This left the denizens of the small neighborhood by the southern wall and out-of-towners, those Vidish lumber haulers, wastefolk scrap-merchants, and Border States tourists, whose caravans parked at the gate.
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